Chihuahuas are labeled yappy and temperamental, whereas bulldogs are described as easygoing and sociable.
These behavioral stereotypes are ingrained in how many view breeds, from Great Danes to shih tzus. Before beginning work on dog behavior, “I really held this idea of breeds being different to be the truth,” says Kathleen Morrill, a dog geneticist at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. “Every single book about breeds tells you that selecting a breed is the most important thing to consider when you’re getting a dog.”
But in a new study published on [April 28] in Science, Morrill and her colleagues show that a show that a dog’s breed is not a good predictor of behavior. They propose that most behavioral trends in dog types predate modern breeding, which primarily altered physical appearance.
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After running the survey data and sequenced DNA through a battery of statistical analyses, Morrill and her co-authors identified 11 genetic regions strongly associated with dog behavior, such as howling frequency and sociability with humans. But none of these behavioral regions was specific to any one of the 78 breeds examined in the study.
Even the behavioral traits that seemed to be breed-specific, such as biddability—how readily a dog responded to commands—were found to vary significantly among individual animals within the same breed.
